justanotherdave wrote:
When you think about it, its quite sad.. The numbers say theres millions of planets supporting intelligent life.. but when you run those numbers again factoring in time & distance.. the chance that any two civilizations are around long enough & close enough to contact each other is far from 99.9%..

This is the crux of the matter for me. Most people make the mistake of ignoring the fact that while the universe is unimaginably big, it's also been around (and will be around) for an unimaginable amount of time. The lifespan of an intelligent species is finite, and in the grand scale of time it's nothing but a blip, so small as to be unnoticeable. The likelihood of another intelligent species being out there, existing in the same timeframe as us, is not as huge as people think. It's not inevitable, and it's there is certainly "not 99.9% percent chance we're not alone." There is also a growing number of scientists which are now believing that evolution to intelligent beings is far far more unlikely than first imagined.

More interesting to me is parallel, or alternative universes, which science is getting closer to proving.

It's also worth reading about the Fermi paradox, which is the contradiction between the supposed high likelihood of alien life, and the complete lack of evidence for it. All things considered, we should have at least some evidence of there being something out there.

Wikipedia is a good place to get started.

The Fermi paradox can be asked in two ways. The first is, "Why are no aliens or their artifacts physically here?" If interstellar travel is possible, even the "slow" kind nearly within the reach of Earth technology, then it would only take from 5 million to 50 million years to colonize the galaxy. This is a relatively small amount of time on a geological scale, let alone a cosmological one. Since there are many stars older than the sun, or since intelligent life might have evolved earlier elsewhere, the question then becomes why the galaxy has not been colonized already. Even if colonization is impractical or undesirable to all alien civilizations, large scale exploration of the galaxy is still possible; the means of exploration and theoretical probes involved are discussed extensively below. However, no signs of either colonization or exploration have been generally acknowledged.

The argument above may not hold for the universe as a whole, since travel times may well explain the lack of physical presence on Earth of alien inhabitants of far away galaxies. However, the question then becomes "Why do we see no signs of intelligent life?" since a sufficiently advanced civilization could potentially be seen over a significant fraction of the size of the observable universe. Even if such civilizations are rare, the scale argument indicates they should exist somewhere at some point during the history of the universe, and since they could be detected from far away over a considerable period of time, many more potential sites for their origin are within our view. However, no incontrovertible signs of such civilizations have been detected.

There are a bunch of theories about the paradox on that page. For a good read, I recommend Rare Earth by Peter Ward.

ecureuil wrote:
There is also a growing number of scientists which are now believing that evolution to intelligent beings is far far more unlikely than first imagined.

I supose when you think about it, we have the perfect planet for life, & in 3.8 billion years self aware intelligent life forms have only ever evolved once..

Still, at least we can go fishing onEuropa

The thing is, it's not just about the planet being the right distance from the sun, but also the other planets in the solar system. The role of planets such as Jupiter, and that we have the right amount of water. There are a huge number of variables that have become just right for intelligent life.

Assuming the dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid impact, as is most commonly believed - would we be here had that event not occurred?

Well, those variables are variable. There's more than the one perfect environment for life on a planet, as we'll probably find out. Given that most stars have an orbiting system of some sort, the chances of there being an almost infinite variation of successful combinations is pretty high.

Well on this planet alone, only one species out of millions ever developed to the point of technology we are at now - us. There's been many times where we could have been wiped out without the technology we have-such as antibiotics and vaccines.

Even if there were extra terrestial life out there, it could have been less fortunate.

I honestly think that the accounts of alien visits/crashes on earth can be explained more by various military organisations that saw in the growth of sci fi with the public the opportunity to exploit that interest. If you compare accounts of UFO crashes, UFO abductions, then our alien visitors have a safety record worse than most modern airlines in terms of crashing, and are less capable of operating undetected that the Special Forces of the USA and UK. Nor does it make sense that their craft would be covered in blinging bright lights when our own "stealth" craft are not. Tactically they are inept if the accounts are believed and in a straight fight we'd wipe them out. Hell, we just need missiles that home in on flashing lights.

Even the apparent flight abilities of such UFO isn't beyond current tech when you take into account that experimental and military tech is often, in aviation, years ahead of known tech.

Back to ghosts - I find it hard to believe that there are billions of people on this planet, thousands of years of history, yet no proof of their existence. And the "proof" that does exist is contradictory.

What I think is more likely is that what people believe are ghosts, the events that cannot be explained away as waking dreams, drugs, mind tricks etc are the by product of something else happening - something time related.

If it were true that ghosts, as many believe, are the spirits of people who met violent deaths or have "unfinished business" on earth then the planet would be seething with ghosts. Nor can they purely be the result of traumatic deaths, because again we'd be head high in the bastards by now.

Fizzog wrote:
And basically whenever he has people over everyone mentions seeing/hearing weird stuff. For instance one night I was woken up by a bloodcurdling scream from right outside the window, it sounded like a little girl in a lot of pain. And as I shot up to look at the window I just managed to see something quickly move. The room was on the second floor.

Could the noise have been a fox? They make this horrendous screaming noise sometimes, it sounds exactly like what you've described, like a girl in pain

I've always wondered why it's rarely considered possible that we might be the first "intelligent" species to arise in the universe. If we aren't, then I think it's a lot more likely that other species managed to get themselves wiped out by the hand of Nature or by themselves. I'm often frankly amazed we humans have got this far.

Dirtbox wrote:

localnotail wrote:

Dirtbox wrote:
Shame MH is utter bollocks really.

I've only watched it once, just to see him, it was really funny. Terrible show. Weird thing is, he's a professional sceptic - and yet all these people constantly write to him about What They Have Seen And Believe.

I blame Fox Mulder.

Is it Keiron O'Keefe? I quite like him, but he's completely wasted there. He's sort of rolled on at the end for the devout morons to boo and hiss at.

Ciarán, yeah, that's him. We spent our teenage years watching all the very worst horror films we could find and getting drunk and talking rubbish about "What if?". Irish Dad, Swiss Mum - always going to turn out a bit weird. I lost contact with him when we went to uni, but he found me again last year thankfully. He's very down to earth, but still silly. I'm not surprised how he turned out really. He did a lot of work on serial killer profiling but somehow he's ended up on TV saying "Erm... no" to people desperate to believe in ghosts.

My friend took a perfectly working camera into a graveyard, took a picture of the gravestone of the person who was supposed to haunt the nearby house and the camera just died instantly and never worked again.

An uncle of mine moved into a house back in the 70s that was very 'odd.' I was too young to know of this at the time, but my mother told me about it when I was older.

There were cold spots around various rooms (you could stand half-in/half-out and feel a definite boundary) and my uncle claims to have seen what he described as a 'black swarm' at the foot of the bed.

They also found it impossible to sleep, as when they did they'd have nightmares or be woken by random noises.

Interestingly, when they slept downstairs, there was no such problem.

They told the council they wanted to move and eventually were given a new place to live. As they were showing my youngest cousin around - she was about 4 or 5 at the time - and when she was shown her new bedroom, she asked (in all innocence, as her parents hadn't told her about the strange happenings), 'And will there be a man in this room?'

They queried her over this and she said, 'Like the one in the old house. The man with red eyes who used to stand in my bedroom.'

There's nothing amazing about our development. We just happen to be in this situation at this stage.

If we had evolved with four legs and eight arms we'd be discussing the how amazing and perfect it is that we are like that. In 250 years we'll be going on about our technological developments. In the same way Og was wowed when Ug created a fire in the cave.

My dad was going round to see a friend from work who was emigrating and I went with him. I was probably 5 or 6 at the time.
I got parked in the living room with his friend's dad and his two children where they were watching TV.

Got home and Mum asked what I'd done, so explained. Next time Dad saw his friend he asked whether his Dad was going to Australia with the family.

His Dad had died three months previously.

Apparently I described him perfectly, and I'd seen him in 'his' chair. I'd never met the family before and had never been to the house.

Dirtbox wrote:
I believe in aliens being somewhere else. Gallivanting around this boring shit hole they aren't.

I've never seen a ghost, but I have seen some strange things. Probably the weirdest was sat on the floor playing cards at a house where two girls were sharing and one of the girls grabbed my arm and I looked to where she was looking to behind the second girl where the was a box of tapes (this is some time ago and tapes were the norm), the tapes were balanced on top of each other on their edges in an impossible way on the edge of the box they were kept in. As the other girl spun around to look she knocked the box and they fell down.

Queue girly shrieking and me wtfing.

I'm liking the fact that ghosts have the dexterity to balance a bunch of old C90s, but not enough to pick up a pen and write "Ghosts exist, btw. WooooOOOOOooooo! Love, Your Dead Nan.".

Fizzog wrote:
For instance one night I was woken up by a bloodcurdling scream from right outside the window, it sounded like a little girl in a lot of pain. And as I shot up to look at the window I just managed to see something quickly move. The room was on the second floor.

As has already been said, probably a fox or somesuch wildlife.

Dirtbox wrote:
Probably the weirdest was sat on the floor playing cards at a house where two girls were sharing and one of the girls grabbed my arm and I looked to where she was looking to behind the second girl where the was a box of tapes (this is some time ago and tapes were the norm), the tapes were balanced on top of each other on their edges in an impossible way on the edge of the box they were kept in. As the other girl spun around to look she knocked the box and they fell down.

Queue girly shrieking and me wtfing.

/Venkman

You're right, no human being would stack tapes like this.

AltCtrlDelete wrote:
You make the mistake of thinking our lifetimes matter. They don't.

My dad was going round to see a friend from work who was emigrating and I went with him. I was probably 5 or 6 at the time.
I got parked in the living room with his friend's dad and his two children where they were watching TV.

Got home and Mum asked what I'd done, so explained. Next time Dad saw his friend he asked whether his Dad was going to Australia with the family.

His Dad had died three months previously.

Apparently I described him perfectly, and I'd seen him in 'his' chair. I'd never met the family before and had never been to the house.

numerous creepy experiences when i was a kid, here they come. i have rather large doubts these were down to "ghosts" as such, so let's just put it down to magical pixies and / or lots of lemonade and chocolate.

anyway. i bring thee three tales of woe! or something.

1) must have been about five or six years old, tops. my dad used to work overseas and he was due to come home on this particular day. my mother was upstairs putting the washing away or whatever, and i wanted some lemonade. deciding to go get it instead of being a whiney kid and dragging her down to fetch it for me, i wandered into the backroom via the knockthrough we had and as I was about to open the door into the hallway fully, what looked like a red cape (not exactly a cape; more like one of those short "thingies" a musketeer would wear. i think) flashed in front of me from behind the other side of the door.

not the best thing you could hope to see as a young kid but oh well.

2) a few years later and my mum and nan are in the living room; i'm in the hallway, lying on the floor and playing with some toys. i suddenly went quite cold and had this horrible sensation that someone was behind me - i had a quick look over my shoulder, and of course there was nobody there.

carried on playing, then i heard a noise - really quite hard to explain what it sounded like, but some sort of skrrritchy skkkratch type thing wouldn't be entirely incorrect. looked over my shoulder again, and about five or six feet away from me (i think - i was only young and lying down so whatever it was looked quite tall) was what i can only describe as a mass of red - kind of like a guy if you'd doused him in petrol and set him ablaze in a movie - with weird horrible slits for eyes and this big grinning mouth and one of his hands was reaching out for me.

needless to say, i absolutely crapped my pants and screamed like a big girl all the way to the front room where i was obviously mocked for dear life by my family.

no idea what that was all about, but some years later i realised it had quite an impact on me - i did a fine art degree, and i suddenly discovered many of the paintings and films i made involved people reaching out / up / wherever to grab something which is interesting.

still freaks me out thinking about it, tbh.

3) when i was about 18 or 19, i was getting on the bus after an evening of watching bad tv with an old ex girlfriend. as i got on the bus, i suddenly had this absolutely unshakable feeling - along with a voice in my head - telling me in no uncertain terms that if I sat in the place I was initially going to sit, bad shit was going to go down.

tried to ignore it, then seemed to be forcibly shunted past the seat in favour of the one right behind it (one of those ones facing backwards). a little puzzled, i sat down and the bus rolled off.

a little while later, i heard a huge thud / smash noise followed by people screaming or whatever - a massive piece of breeze block or something similar had absolutely creamed the window resulting in a zillion shards of glass and debris and other crap all over the seat complete with sharp bits sticking out everywhere (not sure when the "toughened" windows were introduced, but this one was most certainly not anything approaching "tough").

So, uh, all in all rather pleased with that one.

Two and a half tales of woe, then.

oh wait, one more - woke up one morning, heard my mother talking to my uncle who used to drop in on his way to work. went downstairs, voices got louder, walked past the kitchen and didn't say hello as i wanted to grab something from the next room but i saw him sitting there talking to her.

in the next room, they went silent - when i went back through, only my mother was there. you guessed it, he wasn't there at all! / cue x-files music

I have. Once I was playing games late into the night and I swear I saw four ghosts. They were different colours and I was pretty damn scared but I think there was a red one, a pink one, an orange one and a cyan one. Shit me up something proper it did.

Paperghost wrote:
numerous creepy experiences when i was a kid, here they come. i have rather large doubts these were down to "ghosts" as such, so let's just put it down to magical pixies and / or lots of lemonade and chocolate.